Han military officers wore a 'héguān' cap adorned with pheasant tail feathers.
Tips
history
鹖 is not used independently in modern Chinese. It survives in classical compounds such as 鹖冠 (a feathered war cap) and the Daoist text title 鹖冠子. It pairs the phonetic 曷 with the bird radical 鸟 (traditional 鳥).
register
Archaic and literary only; seen in old texts and etymology notes, not in modern speech or writing.
